Ricochet is the best place on the internet to discuss the issues of the day, either through commenting on posts or writing your own for our active and dynamic community in a fully moderated environment. In addition, the Ricochet Audio Network offers over 50 original podcasts with new episodes released every day.
Breaking: House GOP Releases Obamacare Replacement Bill
House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-WI) issued the following statement on introduction of the American Health Care Act:
Obamacare is rapidly collapsing. Skyrocketing premiums, soaring deductibles, and dwindling choices are not what the people were promised seven years ago. It’s time to turn a page and rescue our health care system from this disastrous law. The American Health Care Act is a plan to drive down costs, encourage competition, and give every American access to quality, affordable health insurance. It protects young adults, patients with pre-existing conditions, and provides a stable transition so that no one has the rug pulled out from under them.
Working together, this unified Republican government will deliver relief and peace of mind to the millions of Americans suffering under Obamacare. This will proceed through a transparent process of regular order in full view of the public. I want to thank all of our members who have contributed their ideas, especially Chairman Walden and Chairman Brady, as well as Secretary Price and the Trump administration, for their commitment to keep this promise and get this right.
The complete text of the 66-page bill is available here. (PDF)
Published in General
I disagree most vehemently. Those of us who have followed his posts for a long time know his first love is the well being of his patients. He’s not worried where his next meal is coming from, and he has a heart. Furthermore, he wants the best for this country.
Sounds like they took the wrong (cowardly) approach because of budget worries, giving the funds to insurers instead of individuals, because that way they could keep the costs off-books (no subsidies via tax credits, just via the same ObamaCare phony 3rd party payer mechanisms that permit phantom pricing).
The problem is, that allows the insurers to be bailed out whenever the Congress feels enough heat, and also eliminates the biggest reason to repeal ObamaCare- the need to create a consumer market in health care, controlled by patients. Instead, we appear to just have the same old thing.
Sixty-six pages sound good BUT until malpractice lawsuits & pharmaceuticals are tackled I don’t see any hope. One-payer systems do have certain advantages. And Switzerland and Germany have good systems. Is this really going to be a good idea?
Switzerland has an individual mandate. Last I heard that’s the least popular part of Obamacare.
Actually I just want another drink tonight. I read a summary earlier.
I think it’s underwhelming in many areas but pretty good in others. I suspect it will fail but I’m a pessimist about these health issues.
I’m only going to read the darn thing after it’s done. Super happy it’s in the open at least. Pleasantly surprised.
Will the medical insurance industry be a free industry or a de facto arm of government? If it cannot be financially sustained under proposed regulations except by taxpayer subsidies, then politicians are only pretending it’s a private industry.
Of course. It’s a big ostrich scene every time the bill comes due.
C’mon. Who could possibly read an entire 66 pages???
Reading text of the new bill.
Does this mean the administrative state is being (re)mantled? #toosoon?
So basically your health insurance is not going to go down because it still regulates insurance premiums, still put’s taxpayers in the hole and debt for every expanding health care cost, and the biggest cost increase, it still allows forces insurance companies to take per-existing conditions. Essentially, its a bill socialist if they cared about making a popular healthcare bill would of written instead of a trying to destroy insurance to force the nation to a single payer system. Well Republicans did it against stab us in the back but this one had been coming for a while. I bet a huge conservative block will vote against it.
So basically it only gets ride of some of Obamacare exactly what % of the bill does it remove?
The system we had in place was also a goat rodeo.
As long as we, as a society, want to ensure everyone has some access to health care regardless of their ability to pay, we’re going to have a goat rodeo. No other way around it.
I don’t see anything significant changing. They’re still required to cover all customers at the same price (within age brackets) regardless of pre-existing conditions, which means the government is still forcing them to take losses. Except now the mechanisms for forcing others to overpay to balance out the system have been weakened, so we can probably expect the insurance companies to either withdraw from markets even faster or start asking for handouts.
And a shameless plug for my own thoughts on the draft bill:
This isn’t the Obamacare repeal you’re looking for
Everyone does have access. It’s not the access that’s the problem. They can get it. It is about efficiency and appropriate use and a great many other things. It’s about health maintenance, preventative care, and treating things as they come up rather than waiting to see the doctor with a laundry list.
If it is true that they can spread losses between states, that will definitely help. This would allow them (if they’re smart) to cover smaller towns and smaller markets along with larger markets, absorb some risk and then also cover areas that are vastly more healthy.
As far as I can tell, this proposal does little to address the underlying issues.
In general, free markets are superior at supplying quality products at affordable prices because consumers command a position in a free market exchange whereby consumer’s desires for both low prices and high quality can be enforced. Wanting low prices and high quality is not enough. There has to be a mechanism to translate those wants into effective demand. In a market economy, Consumers reward low price/high quality producers by purchasing their products. Consumers punish high price / low quality producers by withholding their custom.
But in healthcare ‘market’ consumers have been shouldered aside from those commanding heights. Insurance companies and employers now occupy that ground and they do not necessarily care about either low price or high quality. To the extent that they have the ability to pass escalating prices on in the form of higher premiums or stagnant wages, they care little for rising prices. They have no financial incentives to care. And since most insured Americans get their insurance through their employers, there is yet another layer of insulation between them and the actual price of healthcare. As health care prices rise, insurers pass those costs on to the premium payers. But those premium payers are largely employers. Those employers, too, pass on the higher price to their employees, but not in a way that is easy to see. The employee only sees that their wages are stagnant. They don’t see that the money that might have gone to increasing their wages has gone, instead, to pay their higher insurance premium. Nobody in the transaction chain of paying for healthcare has a monetary incentive to fight for lower prices! Consumers are stuck paying for insurance they did not choose and getting healthcare that insurer recommends. They see a doctor who is ‘in network’ and get treatment the insurer approves. Nobody in the transaction has a financial incentive to fight for higher quality! Is it any surprise that we get higher costs and lower quality?
Amen!!!!
Good point – “access” was the wrong word since it’s used too much these days as a weasel word in health care to mean “affordability”.
But even before Obamacare, we had laws mandating that people receive care in certain circumstances regardless of whether they could pay, based on the simplified premise of “not letting people die in the streets”. That’s a noble stance to have, but implementing it will be messy no matter what. And in the pre-Obamacare US, it could get very messy indeed.
It is messy. But it isn’t just messy morally on the care side of things. It’s even messier on the supply side of things. If we mandate that everyone should receive care regardless of ability to pay, what about the providers? What happens to the doctors and nurses when we cannot pay them? Sure, they’re doing a good moral service, but even nuns and priests get paid. Without it, we are ensuring that our providers become slaves, actual slaves.
People do not understand what that is anymore. When people are forced to work without being paid, that is slavery. We have a bit of that already with mandatory overtime, nurses not clocking in to their work (so as not to accrue unapproved overtime) so they won’t get fired for the work that they get paid for. It is madness.
Part of the problem is changing attitudes about healthcare in general. We need to change from a treatment-based system to a prevention-based system and that is a largely cultural war.
I remain unconvinced about an individual mandate. Depending on the entirety of the plan, I am neither for or against. My only experience with Switzerland’s healthcare system comes from The 6 Swiss families I count as personal friends who live there and love the system. Two of the families come to their second home in my neighborhood to escape the worst of the cold Swiss winter.
But my main point is the cost of prescription drugs and the bigger cost of malpractice lawsuits which are the biggest drivers of increased medical costs. Until those two items are dealt with in a healthcare law, the cost of medicine will continue to increase every year. And therefore be unaffordable for many families and individuals.
No argument on this point.
The individual mandate is the part conservatives have been arguing is unconstitutional/tyrannical since the Obamacare debate started, and upholding it is the reason they have excommunicated John Roberts. Regardless of whether it works or not, any system with an individual mandate is dead on arrival.
You are probably right. But maybe they can hold their collective noses and look at the bright side, individual States get to allocate and design Medicaid delivery systems. Block granting Medicaid is very important IMO.
I know what you mean as I also have friends from abroad who love their healthcare. It seems to me that the single payer system works best in smaller countries.
There had better be some tort reform in there. Malpractice is out of control. It’s an open-ended, essentially unlimited cost.
Emoji’s! We need emoji’s!
How many million Mexicans come across the Swiss border every year?
Switzerland didn’t take any of the Middle Eastern refugees that flooded Europe last year either.